With a melange of art, science and hacking, HackteriaLab 2013 is beginning today at NCBS. No, not the kind of computer hacking that comes first to our minds when we hear that word.

Alternative healing systems have always been part of Indian tradition: from local medicine men to the vaidyas or physicians of the more classical unani and ayurveda. The popularity of these remedies took a beating with the advent of allopathic medicine. But traditional medical systems are coming to the fore once again and enjoying renewed interest.

The fastest carnivorous plant: a small aquatic species belonging to the bladderwort genus now holds that distinction. Scientists at the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) filmed Utricularia stellaris trapping its prey and found that it was the fastest ever recorded for a carnivorous plant. The finding reaffirms that even organisms without muscle and nervous systems can evolve mechanisms that make them fast enough to outsmart prey with advanced sensorimotor capacities.

The Science Journalism Course is back at NCBS, now accepting applications for its 2012 batch. But what was it like to be part of the first course held in 2011? What are its alumni doing now? That's something this year's prospective participants will be curious to know.

The Royal Society elected NCBS director K. VijayRaghavan a Fellow of the Society on 19^th April 2012. Out of six scientists of Indian origin elected as Fellows this year, VijayRaghavan is the only one based in India.

Just as banks store away only the most valuable possessions in the most secure safes, cells could also be prioritising which genes to guard most closely. A study published yesterday in Nature shows that bacteria have evolved mechanisms that protect important genes from random mutation, effectively reducing the risk of self-destruction. The study answers a question that has been debated for half a century and could provide insights into how mutations that cause diseases including cancers, arise.

Scientists studying Alzheimer's, amyloidosis or similar diseases caused by malformed proteins won't have to sift through pages of literature anymore. Searching for information including the structures of proteins involved in diseases like these is now easy, thanks to 3DSwap, an online database developed by a team of researchers at NCBS. 3DSwap is a freely-accessible database of proteins recorded in diseases caused due to protein malformation.

In the world of research, questions are the crux. What questions should scientists ask and which are the most pertinent?Nowhere is this more crucial than in medical research. While lab-based scientists will find many questions intrinsically interesting, a sense of what is most important can only come from interacting with people who deal with medical conditions. Doctors, for instance.

NCBS alumni Ganesan Pugalenthi is getting plaudits for his work on bioinformatics algorithms, softwares and tools. He won the 2011 Bioclues Innovation, Research and Development (BIRD) Award, which is given every year for outstanding contributions in the field of functional genomics and bioinformatics by Bioclues, a non-profit virtual organisation "for, by and of" Indian bioinformaticians. The award ceremony was held on 23^rd December 2011 at the National Institute of Nutrition, Hyderabad.